Man Falling Asleep At Shavuot Morning Services Thinks That What God Wants

West Hempstead, NY, June 4 – A synagogue attendee who stayed up all night on the first night of the Shavuot festival cannot keep himself awake at morning services, and believes that his compromised ability to perform a religiously mandatory set of rituals is trumped by the voluntary custom of learning through the night.

Gershon Moskowitz sat through a series of hourlong lectures from approximately midnight Wednesday morning, and as a result he has been unable to stay awake enough to recite the morning Shma and Amidah passages with the congregation. Despite this inability to fulfill two basic obligations, the forty-year-old real estate agent is under the impression that this was the right thing to do.

“I don’t really understand what I’m doing when I daven anyway,” admitted the father of four, using the standard Yiddish term for prayer. “Saying a few Psalms, reciting a few benedictions – I mumble through it all the same way as it is, so the whole davening thing is basically a chore to begin with.” Therefore, reasons Moskowitz, he might as well phone in his morning prayers for the sake of sitting passively while a few other people present their areas of interest.

Moskowitz was already nodding off during the penultimate presentation, and could not, even if pressed, recall its content. He chose to take a walk in the night air rather than attend the final lecture before the morning services, thinking that the move would refresh him and enable him to stay awake through services, but was drowsy again within seven minutes of reentering the building.

The custom of staying up all night on Shavuot to learn Torah was originally observed as a celebration of the day as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai according to Jewish tradition. In communities oriented around the yeshiva lifestyle, this nocturnal vigil involves active involvement in the study, for example by reading the material aloud in a singsong style calculated to aid memory and comprehension. Like most traditional Jewish study hall learning, this practice tends to take place with a study partner, a fact that also contributes to the lively nature of the proceedings.

According to Jewish historian Jerry Das-Haddoros, Moskowitz represents a familiar phenomenon in many communities, where the increased focus on material prosperity leaves little time for pursuits such as a meaningful approach to prayer. “It’s hard to convince someone who feels his career makes it necessary to recite everything at breakneck speed every morning so he can make the 6:56 from the Hempstead Gardens station that he should slow down and devote some attention to the structure and content of each element of the service,” he explains.

Das-Haddoros notes that the attitude often goes hand-in-hand with what he calls “checklist” Judaism, in which the practitioner sees the rituals as a set of obligations to get done, rather than seeing them, individually and collectively, as a vehicle for enriching and enhancing one’s spiritual life, and getting closer to the divine.

He then excused himself with a yawn, noting that it was time for him to sleep the day away now that he had stayed up all night.